"Inertness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had destroyed the impression which a few hours before the enthusiasm of the people on the Boulevard du Temple had left with me. The hesitation of Auguste had impressed me, the Society of Cabinet Makers appeared to shun us, the torpor of the Faubourg St. Antoine was manifest, the inertness of the Faubourg St. Marceau was not less so. I ought to have received notice from the engineer before eleven o'clock, and eleven o'clock was past. Our hopes died away one after another. Nevertheless, all the more reason, in my opinion, to astonish and awaken Paris by an extraordinary ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... grief I endured had not such power over me as that I could be content to risk the being led to the gallows. The love of life, and still more a hatred against oppression, steeled my heart against that species of inertness. In the scene that had just passed I had indulged, as I have said, in a wantonness and luxury of refinement. It was time that indulgence should be brought to a period. It was dangerous to trifle any more upon the brink of fate; ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... that the elaborate legend begins. Till the time of his marriage, he must have been a constant anxiety to his friends; his gloom, his inertia, his drifting mooning ways, his hypochondria, his incapacity for any settled plan of life, all seemed to portend an ultimate failure. But this troubled inertness was the soil of his inspiration; his conceptions took slow and stately shape. He never suffered from the haste, which as Dante says "mars all decency of act." After that time he enjoyed a great domestic happiness, and ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... This inertness veiled skilful manoeuvres. Hamilcar seduced the heads of the villages by all sorts of artifices; and the Mercenaries were hunted, repulsed, and enclosed like wild beasts. As soon as they entered a wood, the trees caught fire around them; ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... whatever is carried out; only it must not form the end of action.) Morality is activity for its own sake, the radical evil—from which only a miracle can deliver us, but a miracle which we must ourselves perform—is inertness, lack of will to rise above the natural determinateness of the impulse of self-preservation to the clear consciousness of duty and of freedom. For the moral man there is no resting; each end attained ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... imposing from the memories of its past, its immense wealth, its tradition of statesmanship, its long association with the intellectual and religious aspirations of men, its hold on social life. But its real power was small. Its moral inertness, its lack of spiritual enthusiasm, gave it less and less hold on the religious minds of the day. Its energies indeed seemed absorbed in a mere clinging to existence. For in spite of steady repression Lollardry still lived on, no ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... truths and another to acknowledge genuine truths. Those who acknowledge genuine truths and yet do not live by them appear in the spiritual world to be without the light and warmth of life in voice and speech, as though they were so much inertness. ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... out, slipped away unfruitful. Of the entire Utah force Adams alone held himself up to the mark, and being only second in command, he was unable to keep the bad example of the chief from working like a leaven of inertness among the men. Branagan voiced the situation in rich brogue one evening when Adams had exhausted his limited vocabulary of abuse on the force for its apathy. "'Tis no use, ava, Misther Adams. If you was the boss himself 'twould be you as would put the comether ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... both pecuniary and active, from Christian churches and individuals. All that is perfectly true and, I believe, undeniable. But it is also true that there remains an enormous, shameful, dead mass of inertness in our churches, and that, unless we can break up that, the omens are bad, bad for society, worse for the church. If cholera is raging in the slums, the suburbs will not escape. If the hovels are infected, the mansions ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... incense to spring and the Lord of the spring, rose the smoke of the whin burnings which were to clear the ground for the sweet young grass, to employ the nibbling teeth of hundreds on hundreds of sheep and lambs. Joanna Crawfurd had never so sighed for spring, never sat in such passive inertness (highly provocative to Lilias), receiving and realizing ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... inertness of observation, but a good strong opacity of vision, was clear when, after leaving the convalescent Toby to dreams of indulgence in the pleasures of the table, and victorious encounters, she roused her old visitor ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... some process of intellectual culture, has been much preached among us both by educational projectors and social reformers, though nearly every man who listens to them here knows the effect of physical toil in the open air in producing sleepiness and mental inertness. It is not surprising, therefore, that it should find ready acceptance in England among people who think ability to bear a hard day on the moors after grouse, or a long run in the saddle after the hounds, argues capacity ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... she would leave him, but, as before, felt a certain inertness in his presence which she was in no mood to combat; instead of going, she turned ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... in the army: I indeed would not quarrel with a man who should desist from combat, being unwarlike; but with you I am indignant from my heart. O soft ones! surely will ye soon create some greater evil by this inertness: but do each of you in his mind ponder on the shame and reproach; for certainly a mighty contest hath arisen. Now indeed brave Hector, good in the din of war, combats at the ships, and hath burst through the gates ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... differing with the authority of leaders on the one hand, and of contradicting the desires of the multitude on the other, induces them to give a careless and passive assent to measures in which they never were consulted; and thus things proceed, by a sort of activity of inertness, until whole bodies, leaders, middle-men, and followers, are all hurried, with every appearance and with many of the effects of unanimity, into schemes of politics, in the substance of which no two of them were ever fully agreed, and the origin ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... The unaccountable inertness of the Eastern army of the Union, under McClellan, gave them time to strengthen their defences, and reinforce their army, which had dwindled to a very low ebb during the winter. But while the commander of the East was planning strategy that, by the slowness of its development, if by nothing ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... And so, in these minor matters, when the community, at last awake to its interest, forbids some injurious practice to go on any longer, it is natural that those who have profited by it, and who, blinded by self-interest, still share the former inertness of the public, should find it hard to submit quietly and good-naturedly to have any restrictive regulations put upon their callings. And where the public can smooth this in any way, they ought to do so; not grudging even large outlay, so ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... the legislator is duly elected, then indeed the style of his speech alters. The nation is sent back into passiveness, inertness, nothingness, and the legislator takes possession of omnipotence. It is for him to invent, for him to direct, for him to impel, for him to organise. Mankind has nothing to do but to submit; the hour of despotism has struck. And we must ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... Railway, connecting this town with Limerick, will, I believe, be opened next week, "despite of foes," but other undertakings are for the moment paralysed. This is the more to be regretted, as Tralee is a rising place. After a desperate struggle against the inertness of Western Ireland on the subject of pure water, the uncongenial element has been introduced so skilfully and with so much fall that a jet can be thrown over any house in Tralee. The last new idea is a railway to Fenit Without, six miles down the bay. Up to the present ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... near the route of our proposed Pacific Railroad, may be interesting to legislators. These masses of silver lie as undisturbed by their present owners as did the Mexican discoveries of gold in California before the American conquest, from the inertness of the local population, and the want of facilities of communication ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... satisfaction of material wants, without torturing himself about imaginary need, and without consuming nerves, muscles, heart and brain in a daily struggle for what he could dispense with? And I asked myself if in that perfect inertness, in that immunity from all feelings of sensuality, hatred, ambition or rivalry must he not be a thousand times happier than we in civilized society who seek fortune and satisfy our caprices, our follies, in the midst of excitement and ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... Colonelcy of Marines Sent on detached service to the Riviera Encounters French fleet Rejoins Hotham at San Fiorenzo Partial fleet action of July Nelson's dissatisfaction with it Discussion of his criticisms Effects of Hotham's inertness ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... penury, inertness, and grimace, In some strange sort, were the land's portion. "See Or shut your eyes," said Nature peevishly, "It nothing skills; I cannot help my case; 'Tis the Last Judgment's fire must cure this place, 65 Calcine its clods ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... and so get the credit of having made it as healthy a place to live in as any near the equator. But apropos of this, I remember what Capt. Webb, the American Consul, told me on my first arrival, when I expressed to him my wonder at the apathy and inertness of men born with the indomitable energy which characterises Europeans and Americans, of men imbued with the progressive and stirring instincts of the white people, who yet allow themselves to dwindle into pallid phantoms of their ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... the undisguised despotism of temper of the Dissenters may at last awaken a jealousy in the laity of the Church of England. But the apathy and inertness are, I ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... movement towards reform. During the last two hundred years reforms have certainly been effected, but they have all been the work of the civil power, and in the realisation of them the monks have shown little more than the virtue of resignation. Here, as elsewhere, we have evidence of that inertness, apathy, and want of spontaneous vigour which form one of the most characteristic traits of Russian national life. In this, as in other departments of national activity, the spring of action has lain not in the people, but ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... function, was substituted an immobile, cold and blackish mass, a sufficient basis for the mechanical continuity of the double, but which that double could neither raise nor guide; whose weight paralysed and whose inertness condemned it to vegetate in darkness, without pleasure and almost without consciousness of existence. Thot, Isis, and Horus applied themselves in the case of Osiris to ameliorating the discomfort and constraint entailed by the more ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... arrangement; but upon the particular kind of form preferred by the artist, and the particular kind of expression common in his pictures; the variety, I may add, is, with one or two exceptions, a variety in inertness. Let us look at a few, taking merely those in one gallery, the Uffizi. The Virgin, in that superb piece of gilding by Simone Martini (did those old painters ever think of the glorified evening sky when they devised ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... armies and navies ready for the Grecian war: there are the French panting for vengeance, and in a few days they will burst upon us. If they find our ports open for their disembarkation; if our inertness or our faults favor their progress they will soon spread throughout the whole of Sicily; they will subdue the irresolute people by force of arms, deceive them with reports of our unhappy divisions, seduce them with promises, and drag them back to the shameful yoke of bondage or drive them to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... fresh complexion and bright blue eyes. He was a good organiser; he put a stop to the constant desertions; he felt the need of improving the Northern cavalry; and he groaned at the spirit with which McClellan had infected his army, a curious collective inertness among men who individually were daring. He seems to have been highly strung; the very little wine that he drank perceptibly affected him; he gave it up altogether in his campaigns. And he cannot have been very clever, for the handsomest ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... its position. If I disturb its rest, it curves and straightens itself in turns by a series of contractions, it tosses about violently where it lies, but does not manage to progress. It fidgets and gets no farther. We shall see later the magnificent problem raised by this inertness. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... always to have enjoyed himself when he goes away. But besides this sort of general favour, he enjoyed a very pleasing little personal popularity which came from his interest in other people, from his good-nature, and from his inertness. He slighted no acquaintance, and talked to every one with the same apparent wish to be entertaining. This was because he was incapable of the cruelty of open indifference when his lot was cast with ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... propensity to disregard portions of time, because only portions may be necessary to the discharge of admitted duties—the danger is imminent—but not to the young alone. In youth, love of action may employ the leisure to the promotion of vice in age, a tendency to inertness may induce the abuse of the leisure to total inaction. I can hardly imagine any object more unsightly than an idle old man—the dead trunk of a decayed tree, marring the landscape and injuring culture. But I must return. Not leisure, for I have little of that to boast of or fear; not leisure, but ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... justly observed in one of his letters, when earnestly cautioning a friend against the pernicious effects of idleness, that active sports are not to be reckoned idleness in young people; and that the listless torpor of doing nothing, alone deserves that name[154]. Of this dismal inertness of disposition, Johnson had all his life too great a share. Mr. Hector relates, that 'he could not oblige him more than by sauntering away the hours of vacation in the fields, during which he was more engaged in talking to himself than to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... John Locke (1632-1704) once said that when he considered the inertness of the Middle Ages he was led to think that God had been content to make man a two-legged animal, leaving to Aristotle the task of making him a thinking being. The worship of Aristotle is easily explained ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... children.... And then the language of free agency and ability came along ... and they'd stick up their ears.... But next minute came along the plea of morality and self-dependence, and I took them by the nape of the neck and twisted their head off." There must have been great inertness in New England at the time of his first visit to Boston, when "nobody seemed to have an idea that there was anything but what God had locked up and frozen from all eternity. The bottom of accountability had fallen out. My first business was to put it in again." The coldness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... himself with another nap, intending to get up as soon as it was perfectly dark. The strong potation he had taken, combined with fatigue and anxiety he had previously undergone, made him oversleep himself, and when he awoke it was just beginning to grow light. Cursing himself for his inertness, Jack soon shook off this drowsiness, and set to work in earnest. Availing himself of certain inequalities in the door, he soon managed to climb up to the roof; and securing his feet against a slight projection in the wall, began to use the fork with great effect. Before ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... a boy after all, and sick and heart-broken, he had to swallow several times very hard to keep from breaking down. And the reaction and fatigue together stunned him into inertness. For a moment only, then his persistent stubbornness came to ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... of the months of regret and sorrow that had followed upon his coming to America struck him with nausea. The thought of his long ineptitude for the life which he had adopted voluntarily gave him a feeling of self-contempt. The inertness ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... all converged in an opposition to Steele. His presence in the Indian country seemed to block the advancement of everybody. Cooper resented his authority over himself and Stand Watie interpreted his waiting policy as due to inertness and ineptitude. So small a hold did the Federals really have on the Indian country that if Steele would only exert ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... impatience of study, an inertness, a dragging along, an infection of 'young-Americanism,' a disposition to flounder along through duties half done, hurrying to reach—what is never attained—an 'easy success'; and I observe that this state of things is confined to the higher ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Asiatics. At the present conjuncture, too, the number of the malcontents was swelled by the addition of the recently subdued Bactrians, who hated the Parthian yoke, and longed earnestly for a chance of recovering their freedom. Thus when Demetrius II., anxious to escape the reproach of inertness, determined to make an expedition against the great Parthian monarch, he found himself welcomed as a deliverer by a considerable number of his enemy's subjects, whom the harshness, or the novelty, of the Parthian rule had offended. The malcontents joined his standard as he advanced; and supported, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... circumstances, conducing, generally, to mental strength and vigor, to note; and which we may employ as a reliable basis for judgment; and it would be manifestly unfair to argue weak mental calibre, or to presage small mental capacity in the Indian, from his present deplorable state of inertness, a condition which has been sadly impressed and confirmed by repressive legislation, and of which that legislation, by practically denying him occupation of improving fields of thought, and, indeed, scope for any enlarged mental activity, seeks to ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... of no use against that usurper, were pillaging the Roman cities. Inasmuch as he was young he ordered him to undertake nothing without consulting the other military chiefs.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Julian's complaint to the Emperor of the inertness of his military officers procured for him a coadjutor in the command more in sympathy with his ardor; and by their combined efforts an assault was made upon the barbarians. But they sent him an embassy, assuring him that they ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... train at New York and left at Riverdale. There was no particular of the business which he did not scrutinize and master, not only with his poignant concern for her welfare, but with his strong curiosity as to how these unusual things were done with the usual means. With the inertness that grows upon an aging man he had been used to delegating more and more things, but of that thing I perceived that he would not delegate ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of warlike genius, need despair of creating a good army if only he have the men; for the prince who has many subjects and yet lacks soldiers, has only to thank his own inertness and want of foresight, and must not complain of the cowardice of ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... the great book of mankind, and a new conclusion from its pages; viz. that no virtue can make so perfect a philosopher as the senses; there is no content like that of the epicure—no active code of morals so difficult to conquer as the inertness of his indolence; he is the only being in the world for whom the present has a supremer gratification ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and I would add that this retouching would be found more apparent at the beginning of the volume than elsewhere. This may be easily accounted for by the feeling that modern as well as ancient authors have, viz., that of laziness and inertness; revising the first 100 pages carefully, but decreasing from that point. But to return: Later editors, I conceive, erased the word Thurium used by Herodotus, who was piqued and vexed at his native city, and substituted, or ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... deal of N, but they are incapable of making use of that in the air, on account of the chemical inactivity of the element. Their supply comes from compounds in earth, water, and air. By reason of its inertness N is very easily set free from its compounds. For this reason it is a constituent of most explosives, as gunpowder, nitro-glycerine, dynamite, etc. These solids, by heat or concussion, are suddenly changed to gases, which thereby occupy much more ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... Athenians to Salamis had not been a willing resort. That gallant people had remained in Attica so long as they could entertain any expectation of assistance from the Peloponnesus; nor was it until compelled by despair at the inertness of their allies, and the appearance of the Persians in Boeotia, that they had ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the choicest flowers of every clime, now presents an area overgrown with rank weeds, decaying hedges, dilapidated walks, and sickly shrubbery. The hand that once nurtured this pretty scene of buds and blossoms with so much care has passed away. Dull inertness now hangs its lifeless festoons over the whole, from the vaulted hall to the iron railing ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... urged, that if men waited for the perfecting of individual character, before they joined their fellow men in those great undertakings which are to insure benefit to the race, nothing would ever be accomplished, and society would languish in a state of passive inertness. It is far from necessarily following that attention to private should interfere with attention to public interests; and public interests are more advanced or retarded than it is possible to believe, by the personal characters of their agitators. ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... man in the early stages of his progress. History is the record of individuality, and in primitive times equality and communism prevailed, and the individual had not yet separated himself from the mass. Man had settled into the dull inertness of a stagnant pool, and the fierce winds of war were needed to break up his mental slothfulness and stir thought into healthful activity. There must be leaders before there can be history; the annals of mankind begin in hero worship; the relations of ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... creation of God. It is light, sprung from void darkness; power, waked from inertness and impotence; being created from nothing; and the contrast may well enkindle wonder and delight. It is a rill from the infinite, overflowing goodness; and from the moment when it first gushes up into the light, to that when it ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... and though he admits that the art is popular among a certain class in Cuba, he is of opinion that the Cuban bruja, or witch, is simply a high order of gipsy, whose chief object is pecuniary gain. The government of the country, with its accustomed inertness, has not yet established a law for the suppression of this evil; 'and so,' says the tobacconist, 'sorcery flourishes, and ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... Dulness. At least, the darkness and weakness of the moral reason came under the protection of the mighty mother—the daughter of Chaos and of Night. She fosters the disorder and the darkness of the soul. Mere bluntness and inertness of intellect, which the name would suggest, he never confines himself to. Of sharp misused power of mind, too, she is the tutelary goddess. Errors which mind arrives at by too much subtlety, by self-blinding activity, serve her purpose and the poet's; and so some names of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... arms and around his waist for the purpose, he could be lifted by the ends of the fabric through that aperture by the strength of any one man. Naturally he himself would make no effort to facilitate the enterprise. On the contrary, such inertness as the sheer exercise of will could compass was added to his dead weight. Nevertheless he rose slowly, slowly through the air. As he was finally dragged through the rift in the rocks, his first feeling was one of gratification to perceive that no one man could so handle ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... reflexion, will not perceive in them any power or activity; there is, therefore, no such thing contained in them. A little attention will discover to us that the very being of an idea implies passiveness and inertness in it, insomuch that it is impossible for an idea to do anything, or, strictly speaking, to be the cause of anything: neither can it be the resemblance or pattern of any active being, as is evident from ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... which, though late, looked upon me in my inertness, After the time when my beard fell whiter front me in shaving,— Yet she looked upon me, and came to me after a long while, Since Amaryllis possesses and Galatea hath left me. For I will even confess that while ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... He was capable not only of the physical feelings of weariness, and hunger, and thirst, and pain, but that He, too, had that emotion which only a limited understanding can have—the emotion of wonder. And it was drawn out by His disciples' denseness and inertness. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... profound and determined that it threatened thus brutally any voice that would disturb it. Their duty, then, was evident: to fling all the forces of their lives, and by all social and political means, right against this inertness, and shatter it if they could. To Mr. Chase, the course of things gave the larger political work; to my father, the larger social. His diary records how amazed he was, when he returned to Philadelphia, at his former blindness, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... I said, proceeding to give her an account of Robbie Muir's silent, solid inertness, and how he ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... too much inertness are both fatal to politeness. By the former we are hurried too far, by the latter we are kept ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... coiled in the scupper, very wet and still. He took hold of him to draw him under the forecastle head, where he would have shelter, and was alarmed at the inertness of the ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... said that she did not at all regret a lot which carried her no higher, whatever the vulgar might think of such an opinion. She spoke of the glories of the jewel who was close to her, Folco—contrasted his zeal with the inertness of her contemptible countrymen—and foretold the bloodshed that awaited the latter from wars and treacheries. The Troubadour, meanwhile, glowed in his aspect like a ruby stricken with the sun; for in heaven joy is expressed by effulgence, as on earth by laughter. He confessed the lawless ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... was deserted. But he caught his breath sharply as he made out a long, dark shape which lay, with the inertness of death, under his port-hole, blending with the shadows. He rolled the man over upon his back, and dragged him by the heels under the deck-light, and, dragging him, a dark trail spread out upon the boards, and even as Peter examined the cold ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... second-hand, or imperfect, and even trifling. Thus grace of manner, for instance, though wholly unaided by a single definite quality, will often delight us, and a ready elocution, with scarce a particle of sense, make commonplace agreeable; and it seems to be, that the pain of mental inertness renders action so desirable, that the mind instinctively surrounds itself with myriads of objects, having little to recommend them but the property of keeping it from stagnating. And we are far from denying ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... no doubt that the Indians are the most lazy, indolent race of human beings. No attempt which has ever been made to convert them into slaves, has availed much. The rigid discipline of a Spanish master, has failed to overcome that inertness, from which an Indian is roused only by war and the chase—Engaged in these, he exhibits as much activity and perseverance, as could be displayed by any one; and to gratify his fondness for them, will encounter toils and privations, from which others would shrink. His very form indicates at ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... in the society's lists. I say the most successful, because to-night we should particularly observe, I think, that there is success in all honest endeavour, and that there is some victory gained in every gallant struggle that is made. To strive at all involves a victory achieved over sloth, inertness, and indifference; and competition for these prizes involves, besides, in the vast majority of cases, competition with and mastery asserted over circumstances adverse to the effort made. Therefore, every losing ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... respecting its exercise, that it is inconceivable, or involves wholly incongruous ideas. The necessary attributes of matter, according to our conception of it, are extension, figure, impenetrability, and inertness; the properties of mind are thought, sensation, activity, and will. These attributes are essential, not arbitrary or contingent; for they make up our whole idea of the substances in which they inhere. We can no more suppose them to be interchangeable, than we can literally attribute dimensions ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... long satisfied with himself or his pursuits, his ardour had only been the prelude to vexation and self-abasement, and in his station in the world there was little incentive to exertion. He had a strong sense of responsibility, with a temperament made up of tenderness, refinement, and inertness, such as shrank from the career set before him. He had seen just enough of political life to destroy any romance of patriotism, and to make him regard it as little more than party spirit, and dread the hardening and deadening process on the mind. He had a dismal experience of ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rested in his chair with a ponderous inertness which was a telltale witness to his essential helplessness. His left hand still failed to participate in the movements of his right, and yet, as he showed, he could, by special effort of will, use it. "I'm gaining all the time—but slowly," he went on. "I want to make a trip back ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... enterprise, headed by a man of every talent except the right sort; and chilled, rather than aided, by the presence of that melancholy exile who presented himself for the first and last time, to sadden by the gloom of his aspect, and the inertness of his measures, the hearts that yearned to welcome him back ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... relief, or "enhanced flavor"; it is in a state of stupor. Death, he thinks, may produce this state for a time in animals. The monads completely fill the world; there is never and nowhere a void, and never complete inanimateness and inertness. The universe is a plenum of souls. Wherever we behold an organic whole, (unum per se,) there monads are grouped around a central monad to which they are subordinate, and which they are constrained to serve so long as that connection lasts. Masses of inorganic matter are aggregations of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... little kingdom of the departed, surrounded by the laughing children and preceded by the priests and acolytes. All the sounds and activities of the day—the merriment of the little ones, the oblations of the priests, the greetings of friends—were followed by inertness and languor. Motionless against the sky spread the branches of the trees, like lines etched there; still were the clambering vines that clasped monolith ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... associates, such as the state of his health might continue, above all if Gregorio could be dispensed with. The man himself had become aware of the combination against him, and, though reckoning on his master's inertness and dependence upon him, knew that a fresh offence might complete his overthrow, and therefore took care to be on his ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... out of action in this business. Thou lovest to linger on in fair appearances; Steps of extremity are not thy province, Therefore have I sought out this part for thee. Thou wilt this time be of most service to me By thy inertness. The meantime, if fortune Declare itself on my side, thou wilt know What ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the general health; the victim is tired, listless, and apathetic, and is thereby disinclined to exercise adequately; the appetite is poor; there are headaches, neuralgias, insomnia, nervousness, melancholia, and general mental and physical inertness. What hope may a pregnant woman entertain of having "an easy confinement," or of bringing a healthy child into the world under these circumstances? Who is to blame? Sometimes it is necessary to tell ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... this terrific strife, the combatants now relaxed their efforts for a brief space; but while Napoleon used the time of respite in hurrying up troops from all parts of his vast dominions, the allies did little to improve their advantage. This inertness is all the more strange as Prussia and Russia came to closer accord in the Treaty of Bartenstein (April ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... is not all-powerful, and that there is a real dualism in nature, two powers in eternal opposition; or else realise that evil is in some way a manifestation of God. If we adopt the first theory, we may conceive of the stationary tendency in nature, its inertness, the force that tends to bring motion to a standstill, as one power, the power of Death; and we may conceive of all motion and force as the other power, the quickening spirit, the power of life. But even here we are met with a difficulty, for when we try to transfer this dualism to ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... before him. Thus far there had been no moonlight; but now, as he looked towards the east, he noticed that the sky was already flushing with the tints of dawn. But even this failed to rouse him.. A profound weariness and inertness settled slowly over every sense and limb, and falling back, he fell ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... think of nature as existing in a certain way which we call physical. We call the world the physical world. This mode of existence involves inertness. That which is physical does not act, except passively, as it is acted upon. Inertness is inaction. That which is inert, therefore, differs from that which is not inert by defect. The inert wants something ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... of the sciences at last obliges them to abandon their doctrine, they never adopt the most modern theories, were they, in other respects, preferable; but embrace those which existed for some time anterior to them, and which they themselves had before combated. This inertness of bodies, employed in instruction, is an unavoidable evil; because it is the effect of self-love, the most invariable ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... the parallel between putrefaction in this instance and the vinous fermentation, as regards the greatness of the effect produced, compared with the minuteness and the inertness, chemically speaking, of the cause, you will naturally desire further evidence of the similarity of the two processes. You can see with the microscope the Torula of fermenting must or beer. Is there, you may ask, any organism to be detected in the putrefying pus? ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... that day. I maintained the intention until sunset; then, seeing that it was too late, I postponed my departure until the morrow. I can assign no reason for my dallying mood. Perhaps it sprang from the inertness that pervaded me, perhaps some mysterious hand detained me. Be that as it may, that I remained another night at the Hotel de l'Epee was one of those contingencies which, though slight and seemingly inconsequential in themselves, lead to great issues. Had I departed ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... had, however, been bored for the purpose of observing the movements of the enemy without risk. Through this an eye was now directed, while only the blades of the oars were to be seen projecting from the boat's sides as they reposed in their rowlocks. Encouraged by the seeming apathy and inertness of the crew, the swimming savages paused not to consider of consequences, but continued their daring course as if they had apprehended neither risk nor resistance. Presently a desperate splash was heard near the stern of the boat, and the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... spare he went down the street to the nearest saloon and drank a pony of whiskey. Now and then as he fought and struggled with the vast masses of ebony, rosewood, and mahogany on the upper floor of the music store, raging and chafing at their inertness and unwillingness, while the whiskey pirouetted in his brain, he would ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... pleased, perhaps even consoled, us—warmed our heart with the sense of a loving nearness, shed a light on the visions in our mind. Hence we should cherish them as useful delusions, or rather realities, so long as they awaken a reality of feeling. And 'tis a decent instinct of gratitude, not mere inertness, which causes us to keep them, honoured pensioners of ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... Thus assailed, and dreading to see his bride torn from him by the officials of the foreign oppressor, Arminius delayed no longer, but bent all his energies to organize and execute a general insurrection of the great mass of his countrymen, who hitherto had submitted in sullen inertness to the ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... they abandoned him as soon as they found that he could not command success. In Shantung another rising occurred; but after two years' disturbance the rebel leader was captured and executed. These internal disorders, produced by the corruption and inertness of the officials as much as by a prevalent sense of the embarrassment of the Mings, distracted the attention of the central government from Manchuria, and weakened its preparations ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... ingenuity to reach her. I guessed at Wildred's powerful influence in the affair, and was ready to fancy others; but, as I was to learn long afterward, I brought forward every reason for Karine's mysterious inertness save the right one. ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... His legs twitched convulsively several times. His body was shaken as with a mighty ague. There was a slow expansion of the lungs, accompanied by a deep sigh. Then the air was slowly, very slowly, exhaled, and his body as slowly flattened itself down into inertness. ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... No! penury, inertness and grimace, In some strange sort, were the land's portion. "See Or shut your eyes," said Nature peevishly, "It nothing skills: I cannot help my case: Tis the Last Judgment's fire must cure this place, Calcine its clods and set ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... great English novelists of the eighteenth century. His dead people reveal "the true truth" of their sordid and troubled lives. The little chances, the unguessed-at accidents, the undeserved blows of a capricious destiny, which batter so many of us into helpless inertness, are the aspects of ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... success and good opinion, the standard of a public approbation, exasperated him beyond endurance. He wanted to push the walls out, tear the rugs into rags, and scatter them contemptuously before the scandalized inertness of Eastlake. Lee had what was regarded as an admirable existence, an admirable family—the world imposed this judgment on him; and the desire, the determination, swept over him to smash to irremediable atoms ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... task teaching the negroes to perform this labour. The man who was given a felling-axe immediately set about scraping up weeds, while the grinning warrior armed with a spade incontinently hacked at a hoary tree with Gladstonian ardour. "The stupid inertness of the puzzled negro," says B.-P., "is duller than that of an ox; a dog would grasp your meaning in one-half the time." But B.-P. did not despair of his men, neither did he ill-treat them. For three days he worked hard at tree-felling himself, and he only ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... and the hierarchy of the country, it must have been but a question of courage and of means—a calculation of the probability of success; and as that probability was greatly increased by the results of the first movement at Cabul, and by the inertness of our army after the first outbreak, all acquired courage enough to aid in doing what all had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... enormous sums of money, arms, clothing, and materials of war upon the Spaniards, who wasted or pocketed them, they kept their own army unsupplied with money, transport, or clothes. Unsupported by the home authorities, the British commanders had yet to struggle with the faithlessness, mendacity, and inertness of the Portuguese and Spanish authorities, and were hampered with obstacles such as never beset a British commander before. Still, in spite of this, British genius and valour triumphed over all difficulties, ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... beloved rest through action Which reacheth for the dream of joy on earth; Inertness brings the heart no satisfaction, But condemnation and ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... Slavonians, Romans, or Greeks. But whatever it was, the impulse was as irresistible as the spell which, in our own times, sends the Celtic tribes towards the prairies or the regions of gold across the Atlantic. It requires a strong will, or a great amount of inertness, to be able to withstand the impetus of such national, or rather ethnical, movements. Few will stay behind when all are going. But to let one's friends depart, and then to set out ourselves—to take a road which, lead where it may, can never ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... inert were growing active and playful, the deformed, greatly improving. One teacher said that to see the girls under her care inclined to any active play, until they had been in school months, sometimes years, was very rare. This inertness was more difficult to overcome in girls from the higher than the lower classes, for, in addition to an inert physical organization, a contempt for labor, with which they associated all exertion whatever, was born with them; and only through a long course of training—not until their brains began ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... the island, at the very spot where, scientists averred, a meteorite had fallen in some prehistoric age, there stood a thick grove, chiefly of hemlock trees. Here on this night he paused. A strange inertness filled all nature. Not a whisper from the branches overhead, not a rustle from the dark mold underfoot. Moonlight in one place flecked the motionless leaves of an alder. Trunk and twigs were quite ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the policy of their chiefs. They are, probably, more plastic to the leadership of the heads of departments than members of some English offices, and they are more quickly moved by the influences around them. Sometimes they may relapse into an attitude of indifference and inertness if their chiefs are not active; but, on the other hand, they will act with vigour and decision if they are led by men who know their own minds and desire to be firm in ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... the counting-house of Mr. Crobble. Under his directions, I quickly made myself master of the details of the business. Alas! it was but the slender fragment of a once flourishing mercantile house, of which time had gradually lopped off the correspondents, whilst his own inertness had not supplied the deficiency by a new connexion; for his father had left him such an ample fortune, that he was almost careless of the pursuit, although he could not make up his mind, as he said, to abandon the "old shop," where his present independence had been accumulated. I consequently ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... secondary matters, and forget the whole of the remaining objects around them. To lie morosely on the watch to detect every circumstance that may violate an apparent reality which, strictly speaking, can never be attained, is in fact a proof of inertness of imagination and an incapacity for mental illusion. This prosaical incredulity may be carried so far as to render it utterly impossible for the theatrical artists, who in every constitution of the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... that I mixed with truth, motions of mine That quickened, made the inertness malleolable O' the gold was not mine,"— I. The Ring ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... up in Alessandria should evacuate freely, and with the honours of war; but on those conditions, which are well known, and by which Italy was to be fully restored to the French domination. That day were repaired the faults of Scherer, whose inertness and imbecility had paralysed everything, and who had fled, and been constantly beaten, from the Adriatic to Mont Cenis. The Prince of Liechtenstein begged to return to render an account of his mission ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... days passed, he dwelt in an outward inertness, while his dreams and longings incessantly rehabilitated the home whose desolation he had seen with his own eyes. It would be better to go back and suffer the sentence of the law, and then go to live again ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... consciousness that Luke would never come back, an impression strengthened by the disasters which were rumoured to have befallen the army in Spain. This tended to make their inertness permanent. The headstone grew green as it lay on its back under Ezra's bushes; then a tree by the river was blown down, and, falling across the stone, cracked it in three pieces. Ultimately the pieces became buried in the ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... causes for defection were not in adherence to one chief or to another. They were to be found in selfish inertness, in stubborn conceit, in the long peace, and the enervate superstition which had relaxed the sinews of the old Saxon manhood; in that indifference to things ancient, which contempt for old names and races engendered; that timorous spirit of calculation, which the over-regard for wealth ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of Gracie with the wet handkerchief gave her something to do, and she tenderly moistened the stark, white face. But the children's fears were crowding thick in her own heart. That awful inertness looked so terribly ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... problem is to transform the state-ruled-by-force into a state-ruled-by-reason. To this end man must learn to resist and subdue the two inveterate enemies of his nobility, namely, the tyranny of sense which leads to savagery, and the inertness of mind which leads to barbarism, Schiller defines the savage as a man whose feelings control his principles, the barbarian as a man whose principles destroy his feelings. At present, he declares, the mass of men still oscillate between ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... if they contemplate action, opposed, at least by inertness; but after a time they reappear as if native to the minds which would have none of them by reasonable approaches. This process is accelerated if the suggestion begins to travel from mind to mind. Some individuals are less ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... I feel dashed and sobered. The inertness and phlegmatic apathy of dry and ugly old age seem to weigh upon and press down the passionate life of my youth, but I have not crossed a couple of ploughed fields and seen the long slices newly ploughed, ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... the village was somewhat varied from its wont. Its people were not so far gone in familiarity with occurrences like those of the preceding day, as to be utterly insensible to their consequences; and a chill inertness pervaded all faces, and set at defiance every endeavor on the part of the few who had led, to put the greater number in better spirits, either with themselves or those around them. They were men habituated, it may be, to villanies; ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... always some one walking, but there is always some one resting. They repose at full length wherever the need for sleep takes them; or they sit with pointed knees. Coming from England one is struck by so much inertness; for though the English labourer can be lazy enough he usually rests on his feet, leaning against walls: if he is a land labourer, leaning with his back to the support; if he follows the sea, leaning on ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... will be felt painful, if there is life where the stroke falls. The giver of the seed expects that the sower, if he lives to see it ripening, will reap it joyfully. It is like the joy of harvest to see the Lord's work prospering under our own hand. The Master seems to chide the inertness of his servants when he says, "the fields are white already to harvest." If it were their meat, as it was his, to do the Father's will, they would bound more quickly into the field, whenever they ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... out of action in this business. Thou lovest to linger on in fair appearances; Steps of extremity are not thy province, Therefore have I sought out this part for thee. Thou wilt this time be of most service to me 15 By thy inertness. The mean time, if fortune Declare itself on my side, thou wilt know What ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... mistakes she has made and crimes she has committed to secure this highest boon which modern civilization confers. A great hero may fall, a great nation may be enslaved; but the cause of human freedom will in time triumph over all despots, over all national inertness, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... appearance gave a sudden impetus to a stagnant world. So the Slavonians, who tell only in the mass, and whose influence is ascertainable sometimes by adding to the momentum of active forces, sometimes by impeding through inertness the progress of mankind. ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... "Laura Secord" was written in 1876, and the ballad a year later, but, owing to the inertness of Canadian interest in Canadian literature at that date, could not be published. It is hoped that a better time has at ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... could He be the Creator that deals in diseases—foul and filthy diseases, common, not only to all divisions of the human species, but to quadrupeds, birds, fish, and even flora; that brings into existence cripples and idiots, the blind, the deaf and dumb; and watches with passive inertness the most acute sufferings, not only of adults, but of sinless children and all manner of helpless animals. No! It is impossible to conceive that such incompatibilities can be the work of one Creator. But, supposing, for the sake of argument, we may admit the ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... Harbor is the most important strategic place in the Hawaiian Islands; and it ought to have been strengthened many years ago, and to a greater degree even than is contemplated now. But the sentence is intended as a protest against our continued inertness in failing to establish any suitable naval bases whatever, especially ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... Renaissance that the Venetian history came to be written as a whole. It would seem as though the constitutional stability which formed the secret of the strength of Venice was also the source of comparative intellectual inertness. This contrast between the two republics displayed itself even in their art. Statues of Judith, the tyrannicide, and of David, the liberator of his country, adorned the squares and loggie of Florence. The painters of Venice represented their ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... with the Southern planter ideas of indolence, inertness of disposition, and a love of luxury and idle expense: nothing, however, can be less characteristic of these frontier tamers of the swamp and of the forest: they are hardy, indefatigable, and enterprising to ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... of hearing, and Somers felt that his time had come. But, as we have several times before had occasion to remark, strategy is successful in one only by the blunders and inertness of the other; and he cherished with increased enthusiasm his project of hiding in the chimney. Neither the farmer nor the soldiers were trained detectives, and the blunder they made which rendered Somers's strategy more available was in hunting in crowds instead of singly. ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... she presented it, that Nicholas, who had charge of the schooner, had returned with an European prisoner; but that neither he nor Gustave would give her any further information, although she had requested it in the name of her mistress. This was quite an event, and gave a fillip to the inertness of Madame de Fontanges, whose curiosity ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... slaves) the fear of [?] among the blacks, and the perils that surround the whites, have been hitherto the most powerful causes of the security of the mother countries and of the maintenance of the Portuguese dynasty. Can this security, from its nature, be of long duration? Does it justify the inertness of governments who neglect to remedy the evil while it is yet time? I doubt this. When, under the influence of extraordinary circumstances, alarm is mitigated, when countries in which the accumulation of slaves has produced in ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... have been preferable to Hooker's inertness. There was a variety of opportune diversions to make. Reynolds, with his fresh and eager corps, held the new right, protected in his front by Hunting Run. It would have been easy at any time to project a strong column from his front, and take Stuart's line of battle in reverse. Indeed, a ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... here; spontaneity proclaimed there. The old, the conservation of what has been achieved in the pain and toil of the ages, is dear to the one; the new, change, progress, wins the affection of the other. Inertness and routine, chaos and anarchism, are accusations bandied back and forth. Neglect of the sacred authority of duty is charged by one side, only to be met by counter-charges of suppression of individuality through ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey
... which goes with the most perfect physical life, is experienced only when all the organs are in complete working order and doing full duty. They impart to the whole frame a desire of motion. Hence the activity of the young and healthy as contrasted with the inertness ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... General Cass gave evidence of the spirit which was to actuate many patriotic Democrats when the final ordeal came. It was to be regretted that he had not taken issue with his chief when his paradoxical message was read to the Cabinet, but much is to be allowed to the inertness of a man in his seventy-ninth year. Life-long placeman and unflinching partisan that he was, there was still so much of patriotic conscience in him that he could not stand by and see premeditated dishonor done to ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... alone, or to ponder over the past. He was quite contented with the present; but he did not want to ride with papa, and took every opportunity to shirk; all of which Mr. Dacre set down to the indolence of exhaustion, and the inertness of a mind without ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... seems more pertinent to note here, there is a stillness, not of unobstructed growth, but of passive inertness, and symptom of imminent downfall. As victory is silent, so is defeat. Of the opposing forces the weaker has resigned itself; the stronger marches on, noiseless now, but rapid, inevitable: the fall and overturn will not be noiseless. How all grows, and has its period, even as the herbs ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Clark was empowered to raise the men he wished, and he passed and repassed from Fort Pitt to the Falls of the Ohio and thence to the Illinois in the vain effort to get troops. The inertness and shortsightedness of the frontiersmen, above all the exhaustion of the States, and their timid selfishness and inability to enforce their commands, baffled all of Clark's efforts. In his letters to Washington he bitterly laments his enforced dependence upon ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... more subject in her empire. She soon reproached her for being weak, a constant word in her vocabulary, and the jealous old maid, who would strongly have resented any signs of activity in her sister-in-law, now took a savage pleasure in prodding the languid inertness of the feeble creature. Celeste, ashamed to see her sister-in-law displaying such energy in household work, endeavored to help her, and fell ill in consequence. Instantly, Brigitte was devoted to her, nursed her like ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... will be morning," said George. "Lord, such a night, and Lewis to have missed it all!" His spirits were rising, and he lit a pipe. The north was safe whatever happened, and, as the inertness of midnight passed off, he felt satisfaction in any prospect, however hazardous. He sat down beneath a boulder and smoked, while Andover talked with the others. They were the frontier soldiers, and this was their profession; he was the amateur ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... even to these refined aspects of physical organization and should bring the whole into harmony with the most advanced views of the real nature of physical organisms. This removes from the whole terrestrial organism every similitude of inertness and gives it a fundamental refinement, activity, and potency of the highest order. To form a true and consistent concept, the enveloping earth-science must be assumed to embrace, potentially at least, the essentials of all that was evolved within it and from it, with, of course, due recognition ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... with the whole force of his will the inertness of his limbs and advanced farther. For a while yet it seemed to him that his heart had leaped up into his throat, and this feeling continued until he raised the rifle to his face. Then it was necessary to think of something else. Whether to approach nearer or to fire at once; where to aim. ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... of tamed inertness, suddenly flashed a little figure whose quivering vitality communicated electric thrills. Even the clowns moved less like treadmill horses, as they took their stations at the smaller cages, waiting to lift the gates that would admit the restless ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... began to experience this soon after arriving in the south. This, which in England would be called laziness, is encouraged by the most trifling offices being performed by slaves. The females in particular give way to this inertness, and active women are seldom to be met with, the wives of men in affluent circumstances being in general like pampered children, and suffering dreadfully from ennui. On one occasion an English gentleman at Charleston, with whom ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... with which different minds recoil from death—not considered as an agony or torment, but considered as a mystery, and, next after God, as the most infinite of mysteries. In a brave man this terror may happen to be strong; in a pusillanimous man, simply through inertness and original feebleness of imagination, may happen to be scarcely developed. This oscillation of horror, alternating between death as an agony and death as a mystery, not only exists with a corresponding set of consequences accordingly as one or other ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... therein lies the secret of all the misery and mistakes that have made the world what it is. The few enthusiasts and propagandists have always been confronted by that mountain of inertness, prejudice, and indolence, which the aggregate portion of all nations oppose to anything newer, or wiser, or better than the sloth ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... inertness, to speak of it tenderly, cost the country much blood, millions of money, and a record of disgrace; but it gave a Regiment of Massachusetts Yankees opportunity to whittle up for their home cabinets of curiosities a large pile of walnut ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... contagion of emotion, by which the feeling of one individual is strengthened by the expression of similar feeling in his neighbour, and is explicable, most likely, by the fact that the greatest effort is always required to overcome original inertness, and that two efforts, like two horses starting a carriage instead of one, combined give more than double the value of each taken separately. The fact of this aesthetic sociability is so obvious that we need not discuss it any further, but merely hold it over to add, at ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee |
